Activities at Lucerne House Care Home

It's music festival season and Lucerne Music Festival has been a massive success.

Residents, visitors and team members have gathered in our, transformed, Memory Lane Community for an afternoon of music, dancing, food and fun, spanning the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Team members donned their best festival gear, including our tie-dye t-shirts, made by our residents, complete with festival accessories.

The home was buzzing with energy, laughter and fun which has carried on, into the evening, with residents and visitors still commenting on how much of a great time they have had.

The activities team wish to say a massive thank you to the team, working with us today, for all their support, helping our wonderful residents to dress for the occasion and for joining in with the fun and festivities.

Lucerne may even hold "Lucerne House music festival 2" later in the summer.

For the third year running, we were delighted to have some feathered friends staying with us at Lucerne House. On Wednesday 17th April, the first of our baby ducks, broke through its shell and joined our home. Before long, four more ducklings were cuddled up together, under their brooder, ready to meet our residents, team members and visitors.

Our 5 baby ducks have been getting acquainted with residents, visitors and team members, who have all enjoyed a little snuggle and watching them thrive. We have seen them swimming in a paddling pool and they have brought such joy and warmth as we welcome the spring months to Lucerne House.

The ducks are now living on a small holding, belonging to member of our care team who will be regularly updating us with how they are getting on.

Lucerne House has a very exciting announcement to make as in April we were the first Barchester Healthcare home, in the South West, to receive The Digital Rainbow - Care Home Table. Our residents and members of our team feel truly blessed to have been given hands on training from Karl, from The Digital Rainbow, on how to use all of the amazing features including music, sensory fun, cognitive challenges, reminiscence activities and more.  We have got straight into using our amazing new equipment the very next day. We began with some different games, including, bowling, word searches, who wants to be a millionaire and more.

Then, we took it around the home where residents were able to engage with activities and apps that they enjoy. Sheila was totally taken, being able to play Sudoku in her room. In the afternoon we had planned to have our regular countdown activity, but, with the use of the Care home table, we were able to play digitally, with the ability to have numbers rounds and the "crucial" countdown conundrum. The tables final interaction was in our Memory lane community where residents were able to watch football highlights of their favourite teams on YouTube, engage in sensory activities and we even got some karaoke going which saw residents, visitors and team members all singing songs by various artists. It's only been a day and we are already totally in love with it.

Congratulations to Senior Nurse, Rence Vhinyu on your 10 years of service at Barchester Healthcare.

Rence was presented with her long service award, flowers and chocolates by Sally Coletti, General Manager at Lucerne House.

We are all so proud of you and wish you many more years of service at Barchester. Rence strives to deliver outstanding nursing care and support to all of our residents living at Lucerne House and we are lucky to have her.

It's been an Easter to remember at Lucerne House with lots of fun to enjoy.

We started events with a trip to Alphington Village Hall & Community Centre for Chatterbox cafe. It was lovely to see so many families, friends and members of Alphington community, stopping by to indulge various treats and we hope you all enjoyed our baked efforts. Well done to all the volunteers for another fantastic experience.

Then, on Good Friday afternoon we were been tapping our feet and singing along with Colin and Ian from Sounds Easy at our Good Friday celebrations.

We had tasty hot cross buns and chocolate eggs to compliment proceedings which was finished with our Easter Raffle.

We had 4 prizes to win, 2x Easter gifts, a luxury Lindt Chocolate egg and the star prize, a Hotel Chocolat gift box, which was generously donated by Tracey, a relative of one of our residents.

Congratulations to all of our winners, Pete and Sue, Sheila, Linda and Viv. We hope you all enjoy your prizes and thank everyone for supporting the event.

There was more to enjoy for our residents and team members as Grace, Deputy Manager, visited each community to deliver Chocolate eggs to everyone which were enjoyed on Easter Sunday.

We have been keeping very active at Lucerne House.

A recent, typical day, saw us doing a variety of things. Whilst we had Lorraine Christopher, our wonderful hairdresser in the salon, we were also challenging our abilities at our weekly Countdown inspired word games. Our residents and staff love coming up with 7, 8 or even 9 letter words and we are so impressed with our residents amazing vocabularies and linguistic knowledge.

That afternoon, we were baking for our up and coming, News review club, starting the next day. To compliment the chat, laughter and news discussions, our residents will be able to enjoy, homemade scones, made by our residents and other refreshments.

Our cooking activities are a great way to maintain culinary skills and are always a great source of fun and laughter. We have already made plans to make Hot Cross buns, Simnel cake, baked goods for our local community and possibly more pasties, which are always gladly received.

To round out the day, that evening, residents, visitors and our team have all enjoyed a Chinese takeaway at our Social night. It was a delicious treat and our residents said it was great to get together again.